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November 14, 2013

Press coverage of IDF soldier's murder

Today is the funeral for Eden Atias, the young man who was stabbed to death this week while dosing on a bus in the town of Afula. Below is some coverage from Israel.

But other English language coverage, or lack of it, "shames us" says this media commentator. Rueters includes, as straight information, that the teenage killer was "motivated" by the fact that he has relatives in Israeli prison. The terrorist did tell police that he set out from nearby Jenin, entering Israel illegally, to kill Israelis as revenge for his cousins' imprisonment. The news service leaves out that these relatives were imprisoned for committing murders and gives no other information. AP moves quickly to discussion of possible new apartment building and includes a picture of apartments in another area from 2005, though the main photo does show a women crying out after the attack. On Israeli television news you could hear this women scream "why? why?" in Hebrew.

While Eden Atias is mourned here, there is not likely to be a lot of coverage elsewhere of Hamas's "welcoming" of such attacks.

Atias’s father, who is currently in prison, was brought to the funeral in his prison uniform accompanied by Prisons Service guards.

Earlier Wednesday evening, some 150 people protested at the Afula central bus station, where Atias was murdered, condemning the government's peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel Radio reported.

Atias, a resident of Upper Nazareth, was on his way back to his base Wednesday morning and, according to some reports, was asleep in his seat when a Palestinian teen from the West Bank stabbed him.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the soldier was critically wounded at the scene and taken to the Emek Medical Center in Afula, where he died shortly thereafter. Rosenfeld added that the attack is being treated as ideologically-motivated, as the man told investigators he stabbed the soldier because he has a relative in an Israeli prison.

Sec.-Lt. Yitzhak Maimon, an IDF officer who first arrested the Palestinian youth who carried out the deadly knife attack, told how he arrived at Afula’s central bus station, when he saw an incident unfolding on a bus. He described boarding the vehicle, moving to the back seats, and seeing “a terrorist who seconds earlier stabbed a soldier. Within seconds, when I understood that this is a terror attack, I took responsibility for the incident. I directed my weapon at the terrorist, cocked the gun, and the terrorist froze and gave himself up on the spot.”

continue reading hereNew York Times "outrage" coverage here
Update: The Times apologized for the photo they ran but left the photo online.